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2024 Red Sox win projections
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Post by pappyman99 on Feb 5, 2024 15:40:45 GMT -5
On the one hand, a lot of the quotes here that are critical of the team's leadership are sensible. On the other hand, it's kind of wild how far the sentiment has swung based on all of two mediocre and kind of hard-luck seasons.
I think it's that the Mookie trade really scarred Red Sox Nation. Everything since then has been seen in a far more negative light. Assuming it were possible to do so, they probably should have just given him his $400 million, even if it wouldn't have been the best thing for the team's long-term health.
I can only speak for myself but I just think it's absolutely atrocious to win 78 games 4 years after trading Mookie, and then follow it up with the offseason we've had. If you are going to do a rebuild, then do a rebuild. Instead they have done this weird partial rebuild which in my opinion is the worst of both worlds and how you wind up perpetually a .500-ish team.
Compare the Red Sox to the Cubs, for example. Most people believe the Cubs system is one of of the best in baseball and they just landed 7 guys on MLBs top 100. Of those 7 guys, 4 of them were acquired via trade. None of the Red Sox top 100 guys were acquired via trade, and the only guy in the top 10 is Abreu. You could count Grissom if you want since he would probably be a top 100 guy if eligible, but as good as this system is I don't think it is as good as it should be considering how bad the major league team has been recently.
Probably exactly why Bloom got fired. Bogaerts, Martinez, Eovaldi, Turner, and Paxton were all expiring deal players not traded for prospects in years we finished last….. I agree we half a**ed a rebuild so we are on a slower pace to be legit good again than we otherwise could have been
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TearsIn04
Veteran
Everybody knows Nelson de la Rosa, but who is Karim Garcia?
Posts: 2,837
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Post by TearsIn04 on Feb 5, 2024 16:03:08 GMT -5
On the one hand, a lot of the quotes here that are critical of the team's leadership are sensible. On the other hand, it's kind of wild how far the sentiment has swung based on all of two mediocre and kind of hard-luck seasons.
I think it's that the Mookie trade really scarred Red Sox Nation. Everything since then has been seen in a far more negative light. Assuming it were possible to do so, they probably should have just given him his $400 million, even if it wouldn't have been the best thing for the team's long-term health.
Maybe I have a very niche view of this because I have never killed the Red Sox/Bloom for the MB trade but I'm still turned off by the FO's performance since the end of the 2021 ALCS. Look back at the stories detailing the offers big-spending D-Dom made to Mookie and the counter offers from Mookie's camp. The Red Sox did not cheap out. Also take into consideration Mookie's comments, which came off like someone looking to max out on dollars. As far as the results of the trade, we're not having this conversation if Jeter Downs had developed into a nice, low-cost 3.5 WAR 2B. But he didn't and that's the risk with prospects. Bloom had little leverage in making that trade because only one team was bidding. My unhappiness is with the incoherence of so many other moves - the X low-balling, the Story contract, the Yoshi contract, JBJ's return, the trade deadlines, not finding a way to keep Eo, etc. Think where we'd be with Eo and Kodai Senga, who's another guy a lot of us found interesting and who signed a reasonable contract elsewhere.
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TearsIn04
Veteran
Everybody knows Nelson de la Rosa, but who is Karim Garcia?
Posts: 2,837
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Post by TearsIn04 on Feb 5, 2024 16:12:51 GMT -5
On the one hand, a lot of the quotes here that are critical of the team's leadership are sensible. On the other hand, it's kind of wild how far the sentiment has swung based on all of two mediocre and kind of hard-luck seasons.
I think it's that the Mookie trade really scarred Red Sox Nation. Everything since then has been seen in a far more negative light. Assuming it were possible to do so, they probably should have just given him his $400 million, even if it wouldn't have been the best thing for the team's long-term health.
Maybe I have a very niche view of this because I have never killed the Red Sox/Bloom for the MB trade but I'm still turned off by the FO's performance since the end of the 2021 ALCS. Look back at the stories detailing the offers big-spending D-Dom made to Mookie and the counter offers from Mookie's camp. The Red Sox did not cheap out. Also take into consideration Mookies comments, which came off like someone looking to max out on dollars. As far as the results of the trade, we're not having this conversation if Jeter Downs had developed into a nice, low-cost 3.5 WAR 2B. But he didn't and that's the risk with prospects. Bloom had little leverage in making that trade because only one team was bidding. My unhappiness is with the incoherence of so many other moves - the X low-balling, the Story contract, the Yoshi contract, JBJ's return, the trade deadlines, not finding a way to keep Eo, etc. Think where we'd be with Eo and Kodai Senga, who's another guy a lot of us found interesting and who signed a reasonable contract elsewhere. I'll add that I don't look at the last two years as hard luck. The rosters were poorly constructed. Christian Arroyo in RF, for instance. KKH at SS. JBJ, one of the worst players in the sport in '21, brought back to start in RF in '22. Corey Kluber, OD SP in '23.
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Post by chaimtime on Feb 5, 2024 16:17:59 GMT -5
On the one hand, a lot of the quotes here that are critical of the team's leadership are sensible. On the other hand, it's kind of wild how far the sentiment has swung based on all of two mediocre and kind of hard-luck seasons.
I think it's that the Mookie trade really scarred Red Sox Nation. Everything since then has been seen in a far more negative light. Assuming it were possible to do so, they probably should have just given him his $400 million, even if it wouldn't have been the best thing for the team's long-term health.
I can only speak for myself but I just think it's absolutely atrocious to win 78 games 4 years after trading Mookie, and then follow it up with the offseason we've had. If you are going to do a rebuild, then do a rebuild. Instead they have done this weird partial rebuild which in my opinion is the worst of both worlds and how you wind up perpetually a .500-ish team.
Compare the Red Sox to the Cubs, for example. Most people believe the Cubs system is one of of the best in baseball and they just landed 7 guys on MLBs top 100. Of those 7 guys, 4 of them were acquired via trade. None of the Red Sox top 100 guys were acquired via trade, and the only guy in the top 10 is Abreu. You could count Grissom if you want since he would probably be a top 100 guy if eligible, but as good as this system is I don't think it is as good as it should be considering how bad the major league team has been recently.
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
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Post by pappyman99 on Feb 5, 2024 16:30:34 GMT -5
I mean they got nothing for all of those guys, and worse they made their comp picks worse
It would be complete conjecture from you or me say what they would have gotten, other than they would have gotten something as opposed to nothing, and also improved there comp picks last year
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Post by chaimtime on Feb 5, 2024 17:30:27 GMT -5
Of course it’s conjecture, none of us know the full story about anything (although I’m almost certain there were reports that the Sox couldn’t get a Paxton deal done because everybody expected him to break down at some point and therefore didn’t offer anything they were interested in). I don’t think there’s any way to disagree that it was a mistake in hindsight. I’m just saying that logically, it doesn’t seem likely that they missed out on anything particularly interesting at the ‘22 deadline, and the lost value has always seemed marginal compared to more deep-rooted issues with the roster and organization at large.
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Post by theburn on Feb 5, 2024 17:32:42 GMT -5
I can only speak for myself but I just think it's absolutely atrocious to win 78 games 4 years after trading Mookie, and then follow it up with the offseason we've had. If you are going to do a rebuild, then do a rebuild. Instead they have done this weird partial rebuild which in my opinion is the worst of both worlds and how you wind up perpetually a .500-ish team.
Compare the Red Sox to the Cubs, for example. Most people believe the Cubs system is one of of the best in baseball and they just landed 7 guys on MLBs top 100. Of those 7 guys, 4 of them were acquired via trade. None of the Red Sox top 100 guys were acquired via trade, and the only guy in the top 10 is Abreu. You could count Grissom if you want since he would probably be a top 100 guy if eligible, but as good as this system is I don't think it is as good as it should be considering how bad the major league team has been recently.
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
That we'll never know is kinda the point. How impactful would returns for JD, Eovaldi, Paxton, etc. be? A lot more than what they got!
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Post by chaimtime on Feb 5, 2024 17:48:25 GMT -5
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
That we'll never know is kinda the point. How impactful would returns for JD, Eovaldi, Paxton, etc. be? A lot more than what they got! If their scouting/projections for the guys they were being offered said “future org filler/up and down depth” then that would be less than what they got, which was a few months of MLB production. But this is not the place for another litigation of the ‘22/‘23 deadlines and nobody wants to read another one of those, so I will leave it at that.
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Post by incandenza on Feb 5, 2024 17:48:46 GMT -5
I can only speak for myself but I just think it's absolutely atrocious to win 78 games 4 years after trading Mookie, and then follow it up with the offseason we've had. If you are going to do a rebuild, then do a rebuild. Instead they have done this weird partial rebuild which in my opinion is the worst of both worlds and how you wind up perpetually a .500-ish team.
Compare the Red Sox to the Cubs, for example. Most people believe the Cubs system is one of of the best in baseball and they just landed 7 guys on MLBs top 100. Of those 7 guys, 4 of them were acquired via trade. None of the Red Sox top 100 guys were acquired via trade, and the only guy in the top 10 is Abreu. You could count Grissom if you want since he would probably be a top 100 guy if eligible, but as good as this system is I don't think it is as good as it should be considering how bad the major league team has been recently.
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
I suppose if in '22 they had traded JDM for Valdez and McGuire and Eovaldi for Wilyer Abreu, people would be pretty happy with how the trade deadline had gone down. (Of course they would have made the 2022 team worse rather than improved it...)
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Post by chaimtime on Feb 5, 2024 18:07:44 GMT -5
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
I suppose if in '22 they had traded JDM for Valdez and McGuire and Eovaldi for Wilyer Abreu, people would be pretty happy with how the trade deadline had gone down. (Of course they would have made the 2022 team worse rather than improved it...) Last post about the trade deadline, just because this perfectly illustrates my point. Vazquez was an elite defensive catcher putting up a 110 wRC+ while making $7 million. JD was a DH-only player in the middle of the worst slump of his career (the Covid year notwithstanding) making a tick over $19 million. Eovaldi had just come off the IL and given up 17 runs (16 earned) in 13 innings in three starts leading up to the deadline, and was making $17 million. Why would you expect a similar return for JD and Eovaldi as they got for Vazquez? It seems to me that Vazquez would have had a lot more trade value—which would explain why he was moved and the others weren’t. If I’m in the GM chair for another team at that point, I’m telling Bloom that he can either eat some money for a lottery ticket, or he can give me a lottery ticket to take the money off his hands.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Feb 5, 2024 20:37:38 GMT -5
I can only speak for myself but I just think it's absolutely atrocious to win 78 games 4 years after trading Mookie, and then follow it up with the offseason we've had. If you are going to do a rebuild, then do a rebuild. Instead they have done this weird partial rebuild which in my opinion is the worst of both worlds and how you wind up perpetually a .500-ish team.
Compare the Red Sox to the Cubs, for example. Most people believe the Cubs system is one of of the best in baseball and they just landed 7 guys on MLBs top 100. Of those 7 guys, 4 of them were acquired via trade. None of the Red Sox top 100 guys were acquired via trade, and the only guy in the top 10 is Abreu. You could count Grissom if you want since he would probably be a top 100 guy if eligible, but as good as this system is I don't think it is as good as it should be considering how bad the major league team has been recently.
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
Xander had a no trade yes, but players with no trade clause do get traded. Eovaldi was good coming off a good 2021, I am sure if he had been traded in that offseason, he could have netted something solid. And they also had Eduardo Rodgriguez. Now I know what you are going to say - he was part of the 2021 team that went to the ALCS! But doesn't that completely undermine trading Mookie in the first place? This is what I mean by a half-assed rebuild, the team wasn't good enough to hold onto Mookie, but they were good enough to hold onto Eduardo Rodriguez? How does that make any sense?
Breslow has spoken at length this offseason about now is not the time to trade future wins for present wins, and I think everyone on this board agrees with that. But over the last 5 years, they have also made a conscious decision not to trade present wins for future wins, despite the fact that those present wins have been pretty much worthless - and they knew the present wins were worthless because they traded Mookie. And now it's coming back to bite them.
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Post by puzzler on Feb 5, 2024 21:50:35 GMT -5
This offseason was a failure the moment Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers. Still not sure signing Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery would change that, though. There's a reason nobody else has signed them yet, either. I like the moves they have made, and I think the hires they've made to the coaching and player development staffs have the potential to be really impactful, but they missed the one chance they really had to add a number 1.
I don't think the partial rebuild has been that much of a problem--baseball is unique in how draft position matters less than what you do with the players once you draft them. There's a reason why the Orioles are only just turning their perennial last place finishes into a young juggernaut, they've dedicated a ton of resources to getting better at turning amateurs into MLB players. Turning the 42nd overall pick in the draft into the top prospect in all of baseball helps a lot, too, and the Red Sox have been quite bad at that sort of thing. They probably won't be the sort of team we want them to be until they get better at it--which, on the bright side, it looks like they are.
I don't know how much more they really could've done, though. Like, how impactful of a return was an increasingly washed-looking JD Martinez, hurt Eovaldi, and sure-to-break-down Paxton really gonna bring back? Probably not a PCA/Kevin Alcantara type of prospect, if we're using the Cubs as a comparison. The Cubs traded Javy Baez (an elite defensive middle infielder in the midst of a 4-win campaign), Anthony Rizzo (the best first baseman, and arguably hitter in general, on the market) and Yu Darvish (coming off a season where he was the best pitcher in the NL, COVID year or not) for those guys. That's...a lot better than anything the Red Sox had to trade beyond Xander, who had a full no-trade clause. The Turner/Cabrera swap that was reportedly on the table at the deadline was a missed opportunity, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle all that much for the 2024 Red Sox.
Xander had a no trade yes, but players with no trade clause do get traded. Eovaldi was good coming off a good 2021, I am sure if he had been traded in that offseason, he could have netted something solid. And they also had Eduardo Rodgriguez. Now I know what you are going to say - he was part of the 2021 team that went to the ALCS! But doesn't that completely undermine trading Mookie in the first place? This is what I mean by a half-assed rebuild, the team wasn't good enough to hold onto Mookie, but they were good enough to hold onto Eduardo Rodriguez? How does that make any sense?
Breslow has spoken at length this offseason about now is not the time to trade future wins for present wins, and I think everyone on this board agrees with that. But over the last 5 years, they have also made a conscious decision not to trade present wins for future wins, despite the fact that those present wins have been pretty much worthless - and they knew the present wins were worthless because they traded Mookie. And now it's coming back to bite them.
Man, this is a bad take. They didn't trade Betts because the team wasn't good enough - they traded him because they didn't believe they would be able to sign him long term. You can argue about whether they should have tried harder, but if you don't believe you'll be able to sign a superstar, then it's much better to trade him. Yes they didn't come out well with the return; but they netted three players and got rid of half of Price's contract which allowed them to be competitive in 2021 even with salary constraints. That's certainly more than they would have received from just offering him a qualifying offer. Eduardo Rodriguez helped get them within two games of the World Series and then they offered him the qualifying offer which I believe ended up netting them Roman Anthony who is now a top 25 or so MLB prospect. That's how it makes sense to do what they did. Why didn't they trade Eduardo Rodriguez in the middle of a playoff hunt? Because they wanted to try to win AND because some players return in a trade isn't more than the value you get from offering them a qualifying offer. In hindsight, it was a no brainer.
EDIT: For all intents and purposes, Rodriguez for Anthony is no different than a trade at the deadline.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Feb 5, 2024 22:56:02 GMT -5
Xander had a no trade yes, but players with no trade clause do get traded. Eovaldi was good coming off a good 2021, I am sure if he had been traded in that offseason, he could have netted something solid. And they also had Eduardo Rodgriguez. Now I know what you are going to say - he was part of the 2021 team that went to the ALCS! But doesn't that completely undermine trading Mookie in the first place? This is what I mean by a half-assed rebuild, the team wasn't good enough to hold onto Mookie, but they were good enough to hold onto Eduardo Rodriguez? How does that make any sense?
Breslow has spoken at length this offseason about now is not the time to trade future wins for present wins, and I think everyone on this board agrees with that. But over the last 5 years, they have also made a conscious decision not to trade present wins for future wins, despite the fact that those present wins have been pretty much worthless - and they knew the present wins were worthless because they traded Mookie. And now it's coming back to bite them.
Man, this is a bad take. They didn't trade Betts because the team wasn't good enough - they traded him because they didn't believe they would be able to sign him long term. You can argue about whether they should have tried harder, but if you don't believe you'll be able to sign a superstar, then it's much better to trade him. Yes they didn't come out well with the return; but they netted three players and got rid of half of Price's contract which allowed them to be competitive in 2021 even with salary constraints. That's certainly more than they would have received from just offering him a qualifying offer. Eduardo Rodriguez helped get them within two games of the World Series and then they offered him the qualifying offer which I believe ended up netting them Roman Anthony who is now a top 25 or so MLB prospect. That's how it makes sense to do what they did. Why didn't they trade Eduardo Rodriguez in the middle of a playoff hunt? Because they wanted to try to win AND because some players return in a trade isn't more than the value you get from offering them a qualifying offer. In hindsight, it was a no brainer.
EDIT: For all intents and purposes, Rodriguez for Anthony is no different than a trade at the deadline.
These are the same thing. They didn't sign him because they didn't believe the team around him would be good enough. Bloom said this many times.
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Post by freckles on Feb 6, 2024 9:58:14 GMT -5
Getting back to our regularly scheduled programming, I think 85+ wins, and a very enjoyable season.
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Post by briam on Feb 7, 2024 11:40:57 GMT -5
Fangraphs released their playoff odds (5.7% to win division, 26.3% to make playoffs) and had this to say about the Sox in the AL East. “Lastly, the Blue Jays and Red Sox are no slouches. We have the Jays as the seventh-best team in baseball, but think they’ll win the 12th-most games. We think the Red Sox are above average and yet will finish with a losing record. Either of those teams would stand a good chance of winning one of the two central divisions. What a wildly competitive group.” blogs.fangraphs.com/six-takeaways-from-our-2024-playoff-odds-release/
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cdj
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Post by cdj on Feb 7, 2024 11:47:36 GMT -5
Probably an accurate take
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Post by incandenza on Feb 7, 2024 14:10:07 GMT -5
Fangraphs released their playoff odds (5.7% to win division, 26.3% to make playoffs) and had this to say about the Sox in the AL East. “Lastly, the Blue Jays and Red Sox are no slouches. We have the Jays as the seventh-best team in baseball, but think they’ll win the 12th-most games. We think the Red Sox are above average and yet will finish with a losing record. Either of those teams would stand a good chance of winning one of the two central divisions. What a wildly competitive group.” blogs.fangraphs.com/six-takeaways-from-our-2024-playoff-odds-release/Sounds like the sort of team for whom one or two extra wins from the free agent market would be especially meaningful.
Pretty weak forecast for the defending world champions.
The Dodgers will be a massive disappointment if they don't win the World Series, which has a 5-in-6 chance of happening.
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Post by puzzler on Feb 7, 2024 14:50:23 GMT -5
Fangraphs released their playoff odds (5.7% to win division, 26.3% to make playoffs) and had this to say about the Sox in the AL East. “Lastly, the Blue Jays and Red Sox are no slouches. We have the Jays as the seventh-best team in baseball, but think they’ll win the 12th-most games. We think the Red Sox are above average and yet will finish with a losing record. Either of those teams would stand a good chance of winning one of the two central divisions. What a wildly competitive group.” blogs.fangraphs.com/six-takeaways-from-our-2024-playoff-odds-release/Sounds like the sort of team for whom one or two extra wins from the free agent market would be especially meaningful.
Pretty weak forecast for the defending world champions.
The Dodgers will be a massive disappointment if they don't win the World Series, which has a 5-in-6 chance of happening.
One or two extra wins doesn't have a meaningful impact on a team with a losing record.
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Post by scottysmalls on Feb 7, 2024 15:38:28 GMT -5
Sounds like the sort of team for whom one or two extra wins from the free agent market would be especially meaningful.
Pretty weak forecast for the defending world champions.
The Dodgers will be a massive disappointment if they don't win the World Series, which has a 5-in-6 chance of happening.
One or two extra wins doesn't have a meaningful impact on a team with a losing record. That's taking the projections way too literally. The broader point is they're on the playoff bubble and those are the teams where one or two wins is most likely to make a difference.
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Post by bettsonmookie on Feb 7, 2024 23:21:15 GMT -5
FWIW, @pitchprofiler on Twitter has 3 Sox starters ranked between 37 and 46 in their T50 SP projection for 2024:
37 - Bello 42 - Giolito 46 - Pivetta
If you consider 1-30 to be “#1’s” and so forth, this would imply the Sox have 3 “#2” starters in Bello, Giolito, and Pivetta.
Montgomery (41st) falls into a similar range in this projection.
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Post by itinerantherb on Feb 8, 2024 0:00:46 GMT -5
There seems to be a real mismatch between what people mean colloquially when they point to #1’s, #2’s, etc. and the universe of actually existing starting pitchers. When I think of a #1, I imagine a guy who can reliably put up, say, a 3.4 ERA (or xERA, if you like) or better, which in reality describes all of 14 qualified pitchers in 2023. When I think of a #2, I think of an ERA between, say, 3.4 and 3.8, which in reality describes SP’s 15 through 25. Even if we lower the minimum IP to 100 to account for starts missed for injuries, the lingo still doesn’t align with reality, especially when you get to the back half of a rotation. Even the “best” #4 by ERA (min. 100 IP) was Christian Javier at 4.56; the best #5 was Taj Bradley at 5.59. If Houck (who I’m guessing is the Sox presumptive #5) posted a 5.59 ERA over the first 100+ IP, most of us would conclude that he’s better off in the pen. How to explain this? Are our colloquial definitions of #1’s, #2’s, etc. more aspirational than realistic? Has this framing outlived its usefulness (if it was ever useful)?
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gerry
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Post by gerry on Feb 8, 2024 2:46:29 GMT -5
You make good sense. What are we missing??
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Post by Smittyw on Feb 8, 2024 8:14:20 GMT -5
There seems to be a real mismatch between what people mean colloquially when they point to #1’s, #2’s, etc. and the universe of actually existing starting pitchers. When I think of a #1, I imagine a guy who can reliably put up, say, a 3.4 ERA (or xERA, if you like) or better, which in reality describes all of 14 qualified pitchers in 2023. When I think of a #2, I think of an ERA between, say, 3.4 and 3.8, which in reality describes SP’s 15 through 25. Even if we lower the minimum IP to 100 to account for starts missed for injuries, the lingo still doesn’t align with reality, especially when you get to the back half of a rotation. Even the “best” #4 by ERA (min. 100 IP) was Christian Javier at 4.56; the best #5 was Taj Bradley at 5.59. If Houck (who I’m guessing is the Sox presumptive #5) posted a 5.59 ERA over the first 100+ IP, most of us would conclude that he’s better off in the pen. How to explain this? Are our colloquial definitions of #1’s, #2’s, etc. more aspirational than realistic? Has this framing outlived its usefulness (if it was ever useful)? Putting it a different way, if someone said at the beginning of the offseason that our rotation would contain two #2s, two solid 3's, and a borderline 3/4, I think most would have said "sign me up." That's what you get from the projected fWAR of our current rotation (Bello 43 in MLB, Giolito 48, Pivetta 70, Houck 81, Crawford 90), which is widely regarded as a catastrophe.
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Post by redsox04071318champs on Feb 8, 2024 8:25:37 GMT -5
The Red Sox rotation has very little track record of success. Until they do it there will be skepticism. Only Giolito has been very successful but that was awhile ago. Pivetta has a consistent track record of being Jekyll and Hyde. He is probably the guy most capable of pitching like an ace, but he could just as easily pitch bad enough to get demoted back to the pen.
Crawford looked promising but it's still unknown if he winds up more of a back end starter than somebody who's a front of the staff pitcher.
Whitlock and Houck have had opportunities to start with varying degrees of success. Neither of them have distinguished themselves. Winckowski as a starter is a complete unknown. Who knows if Houck can finally get lefties out well enough to last more than 5 innings a start? He's coming off an ERA over 5 just is Whitlock, who could be a successful starter if he could stay healthy.
There's so much volatility in the rotation. It could all gel where Pivetta pitches like he did the first half 2022 or the second half 2023, Bello and Crawford could take a step forward, Whitlock's new physique could help him stay healthy. Maybe Bailey figures something out with Giolito that holds for the entire year.
But the possibilities for things to swing the other way are just as strong plus there's little depth behind them if injuries or disappointing performances occur and little bullpen depth should starting pitching need to come out of there.
Right now I'm in the 75 - 78 win area with this team.
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Post by iamnotluistiant on Feb 8, 2024 9:41:42 GMT -5
Unless the Breslow magic kicks in quickly and Houck can get out lefties and make it through a line-up more than twice, and if Whitlock can actually stay healthy and be effective for more than 5 innings and if Giolito first half of last season can be replicated and not the last half, and if Bello can develop another out pitch to become a semi-ace and handle another increase in innings pitched (in the regard he is at really high risk of a major injury this year) and if Crawford can show that he can get major league hitters out on consistent basis, and if Pivetta has one of the better years of his career, and if the 6th, 7th and 8th starters can come in and last more than 2 or 3 innings, and if there aren't a slew of 'closer' games and if the bullpen can come in the fifth inning every other game and hold the lead, yeah maybe this year's starting rotation will be better than last year's.
It's a whole lots of ifs. If Breslow and the starters hit on all those ifs they should head to Las Vegas and clean up at the slots. It is also why this team is more likely to win 70-75 games than 90. We'll see.
Without a bona fide ace or stopper, once the team hits a rough patch in the summer, it is easy to see things snowballing into an extended 9, 10+ games losing streak
One question I haven't really seen address on the forum is maybe all the young Red Sox starting pitchers or prospects aren't really that great. Us fans are viewing them through rose colored prospect glasses looking at their potential instead of their actual talent levels.
Theoretically the defense should be better but the offense maybe in slightly better shape but is still really suspect.
We are going to see a lot of 15-6, 14-8 games this year with the Sox on the wrong end of the score.
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